Bear with us

Yesterday I noticed that the empty trash and recycling cans had been tipped over. The small garden cart wasn’t where we had left it near the cans. This morning I saw that the compost tumbler, full of compost, had been tipped over. It appears, based on circumstantial evidence, we have a hungry bruin in the neighborhood. I will henceforth be more rigorous in my efforts to being the bird feeders in at night.

Snow showers fell again this morning. Sigh. This spring the weather seems to offer a clear example of what can go wrong with seasonal changes that used to be more in synchrony so that there was more to eat when critters came out of hibernation or migrated back north. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' web site section on climate has a page on Spring phenology for this unusual year.

early May: back yard bear paw print

Photo by J. Harrington

April foods for bears include "flower parts of aspen, willow, maple, ash, and hazel....” Last week’s hot spell helped bud burst and the growth of catkins on many local trees, but oaks (not listed for April food) are developing this year’s leaves and flowers on a slower schedule than those trees mentioned above. Last year’s acorn crop was sparser than usual and hungry deer have been feeding on all kinds of bushes, short trees and, we believe, our feral oregano, for several weeks now.

So, the trash can is back to living in the garage. The recycling can has to take its chances. Bird feeders MUST be brought in at night. We’ll hold the dog leashes extra tight during our early morning walks. We’ll also cross our fingers that natural food for bears, like berries and such, develops a little earlier than usual so the bears will stop checking the trash and recycling cans.

The Truro Bear

by Mary Oliver

There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaven,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?

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